Frances Prather

Chapter Summaries Part I, Section 1 For more than two years now, a young shepherd named Santiago has been leading his sheep through the countryside of Spain. One night, he decides to take shelter...

Introduction Watt is a novel by Irish writer Samuel Beckett, first published in 1953 by Olympia Press. Beckett wrote the novel while on the run from the German army of occupation during World War...

Introduction So Far From God is a novel by Chicana writer Ana Castillo, first published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1993. That same year, it was included in The New York Times’ “Notable Books...

Act I A Dance of the Forests begins with Aroni, dubbed “the Lame One”, testifying that he sent two spirits as guests to the Gathering of the Tribes: a couple only referred to as the Dead Man and...

By T. S. Eliot's own note, Tiresias occupies a privileged position in the poem as the personage where all the major elements of the poem meet. The Waste Land is about the degradation and the...

It's possible to go so far as to say that the American prison system is not only linked to slavery, but a direct descendant of it. Some will even argue that it is slavery, just a different kind...

In John Rawls's idea of original position, citizens make agreements about the rules and institutions of society while shrouded by what Rawls calls the veil of ignorance. This term implies a system...

The Pot of Gold is a comedy written by Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. It centers on Euclio, an old man who discovers a pot of gold buried in his house and resolves to hide it from anyone...

“Half a Day” is a short story written by Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, first published in Arabic in the author’s 1991 short story collection The False Dawn. It centers on a young boy who...

“The Sea and the Hills” is a poem written by English novelist, short story writer, and poet Rudyard Kipling, first published in part in the author’s 1901 novel Kim. While the poem follows no strict...

“Raymond’s Run” is a short story written by African American writer, filmmaker, and social activist Toni Cade Bambara, first published in the author’s 1972 short story compilation Gorilla, My Love....

187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007 is a compilation of radical poetry, photographs, and found pieces by Chicano writer Juan Felipe Herrera. One of the poems...

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by American feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, originally published in The New England Magazine in January of 1892. It centers on a woman and...

Neal and Jarrod Shusterman’s 2018 novel Dry does not provide many detailed descriptions of the characters’ appearances. However, it can be inferred that protagonist Alyssa Morrow has an athletic...

In Edward Bloom’s 1997 young adult novel Tangerine, Erik Fisher calls the siblings Tino and Theresa Cruz “farm-labor kids” when he sees that his brother Paul has them over at their house. He...

Canadian author Guy Vanderhaeghe’s 2002 novel The Last Crossing is narrated in multiple perspectives, mainly first-person and third-person omniscient. It is structured in such a way that each...

Chapter eight (“The Eighth Day: Make Them Know”) of Salvage the Bones finds Skeetah allowing his dog China to fight because he believes that she can win. Despite his older brother Randall’s...

In American attorney Regina M. Calcaterra’s memoir Etched in Sand, themes of perseverance and resilience are explored in her harrowing adolescence on Long Island, New York. Regina is the middle...

An example of understatement in the essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” written by American humorist David Sedaris, is when the author describes the two Polish students in the class he attends as “less...

In Neal Shusterman’s Dry, one of the major health issues brought about by the extreme drought—or the “Tap-Out”—is the lack of clean water for disinfection purposes. Before running into Alyssa and...

In chapter 24 of How Much of These Hills is Gold, Lucy is informed by her landlady that she has a male visitor. She incorrectly assumes the visitor to be Charles, the fiancé of her close friend...

The phenomenon that Simmel describes occurs primarily when the intellectual component of an activity is usurped by a machine and becomes objectified in its mechanization. In this case, a car per se...

In Michael Cunningham’s 1998 novel The Hours, insanity is implied to be the result of repression, oppression, or painful personal experiences. This is true in the case of Virginia Woolf and Laura,...

American Gods is a novel written by British novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer Neil Gaiman, first published in 2001 by publishers Headline and William Morrow. In 2002, it received...

Six Degrees of Separation is a play written by American playwright John Guare. It first premiered in 1990 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in New York City. It was nominated for both the Tony Award...

The Hours is a novel written by American novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham, first published in November of 1998 by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. It centers on the lives of three...

Heart of Darkness, written by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad, is set in Africa—to be specific, in the Congo Free State, which is under the control of European imperialist forces in the novel....

The Great Gatsby is a novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in Scribner’s in April of 1925. Nick Carraway, the narrator and main protagonist, is a young man from the...

In Bloodchild, there is fiction between Gan and his elder brother, Qui, as Gan had been chosen at a young age to carry the eggs of T’Gatoi, a female of the Tlic. The Tlic is a race of arachnid-like...

The Metamorphosis is a novel written by novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is meant as an allegory for the alienation of the working class from their own labor...

One satirical element in Gulliver’s Travels can be found in Part I, in the two rival political parties of the fictional kingdom of Lilliput – the Tramecksan and the Slamecksan. The groups are...

Symbolism can be found in the very names of the small cast of characters. Seymour Glass, the main protagonist, for example, is a very perceptive and sensitive man—hence, the surname “Glass”...

In "Church Going," Larkin employs irony in contrasting the common reverence ascribed to church going with the astute, tongue-in-cheek reflections of a non-believer. The poem begins with the persona...

The play Fences was written by African-American writer August Wilson in 1985. It is the sixth installment in Wilson’s ten-part series, Pittsburgh Cycle. In 1987, it was awarded both the Tony Award...

"Casa Tomada," or "House Taken Over," is a short story written by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar. It was first published in 1946 in the literary magazine, Los anales de Buenos Aires, which was...

In John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, one of the memorable sights that affects Hazel Lancaster deeply is seeing Augustus Waters put a cigarette between his lips on their first encounter. This...

Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” was first published by the Partisan Review in 1957. It is set in Harlem, and centers on the relationship between two characters⁠—an algebra teacher and his...

William Shakespeare was an English playwright who lived from April 26, 1564 to April 23, 1616. His pastoral comedy, As You Like It, was first published in 1623. It is an account of Rosalind and...

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who lived from 384–322 BC. Along with Plato, he is considered the “Father of Western Philosophy.” He founded the Lyceum and made significant contributions to the...

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a novel first published in 1958. It is set in the south-eastern part of Nigeria, from pre-colonial times to the arrival of the Europeans in the...

Harold Pinter was a British playwright and director who lived from October 10, 1930 to December 24, 2008. He was highly decorated, with 50 awards and recognitions, including the 2005 Nobel Prize in...

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American writer who lived from February 27, 1902 to December 20, 1968. He published 27 books: sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and two short story collections....

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a novel set in the south-eastern part of Nigeria, from pre-colonial times to the arrival of the Europeans in the late nineteenth century. It was published in...

Edward Said’s 1978 Orientalism is a scholarly text on the West’s demeaning representations of the “Orient”—the cultures and peoples of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. These representations...

The epic, or the Mahakavya, is one of the earliest forms of Indian literature. It is also considered the specialty of the Sanskrit language. One of the characteristics of the classical Indian epic...

The crusades were a series of military expeditions carried out by Christians from all throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. The crusaders travelled to the Middle East in an attempt to seize the...

In chapter one of Don Quixote, Quixote, in order to begin his quest to seek honor and glory as a knight, attempts to repair his great grandfather’s armor. The armor is very old, rust-eaten, and...

In Ancient Greece, Greek mythology had initially served as the “scientific” explanation for natural phenomena. Earthquakes, for example, were believed to have been caused by Poseidon, the god of...

D. H. Lawrence’s The Odour of Chrysanthemums is a short story written in 1909 and published in 1911. The main protagonist is Elizabeth Bates, who is pregnant, along with being the mother of two...

Graham Greene’s "The Destructors" is a short story published in 1954 and set in post-World War II England. The story centers on the exploits of the Wormsley Common Gang, whose members include...